I disagree again!
The immortal quote is (by the narrator of the trailer): "Something's
rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet's taking out the trash."
Almost as good: CLAUDIUS: But soft, fair prince. HAMLET [played by
Schwarzenegger]: Who said I vas fair? [and throws him out a window].
Yours in laudem Shwarzenegger (who is a much better governor than I
think anyone imagined he would be),
pch
At 10:44 AM 2/6/2009, you wrote:
>Hannibal forbore to quote the immortal line uttered by Hamlet-Arnold
>as he turns his submachine gun on Claudius:
>
>"You killed my Fadder!"
>
>Maybe when he's finished being governor of Caleefornia, we can get
>him to play Arthur and say "You pressed my grass!"
>
>Hannibal Hamlin wrote:
>>And for Shakespeare there's the brilliant bit in /Last Action Hero/
>>(an otherwise thoroughly missable movie). Probably you all know it.
>>Joan Plowright appears as a grade school teacher trying in vain to
>>interest her students in Hamlet. She shows a clip from Olivier's
>>film (wonderfully self-referential), but one student -- the
>>protagonist -- still drifts off to sleep, imagining a production of
>>Hamlet starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Needless to say, Arnold's
>>Hamlet does NOT suffer the indecision Coleridge described.
>>
>>Hannibal
>>
>>On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Tuggle, Bradley <[log in to unmask]
>><mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> While we are on Milton, I like to play my students the clip from
>> _Animal House_ when Donald Sutherland (who plays the English
>> Professor) says, "Frankly, I find Milton as boring as you do."
>> It's wonderfully funny, and my students always disagree with him!
>> They claim they find Milton anything but boring. (Maybe they are
>> just trying to butter me up.)
>> Brad Tuggle
>> Instructor
>> Department of English
>> Spring Hill College
>> 4000 Dauphin Street
>> Mobile, Alabama 36608
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List on behalf of Hannibal Hamlin
>> Sent: Fri 2/6/2009 11:53 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Neglecting Spenser
>>
>> I too find Stephen Willett's points interesting and persuasive.
>> But if we
>> take a larger historical perspective, surely interest in most
>> authors and
>> works waxes and wanes? Milton seems now on the ascendent. Witness
>> Nigel
>> Smith's Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare? I doubt Shakespeare will be
>> dislodged from his pre-eminent position as author of authors, but
>> the fact
>> that a book with Smith's title has made such a splash is telling. I've
>> noticed myself how avidly students now respond to Milton (though I
>> don't
>> have enough time in the classroom to say this is necessarily
>> something new).
>> Why? Perhaps a return to religion (or actually just the same
>> interest as
>> ever in places like where I teach -- Ohio). Perhaps Milton's
>> engagement with
>> politics? His obvious self-absorption? (In these days of
>> FaceBook.) In any
>> case, it's worth noting that Milton was once down and out after being
>> trashed by Eliot and others back when. Conversely, the New Critics
>> were
>> crazy about Donne, who rocketed up in popularity. But then my
>> sense is that
>> shares in Donne lost their value for a while. Now, I think, he's
>> back or on
>> the way. As for Spenser, he's subject to the literary-critical market
>> (broadly speaking, dictated as much by general as academic
>> readers) just as
>> any other author. My own thoughts are that he's suffered partly
>> because of
>> his love of artificial form -- or, to put it another way, because
>> of his
>> beauty. Beauty is not much in vogue now, alas (not that Milton isn't
>> beautiful, but I'm betting this is not part of Smith's argument).
>> Of course,
>> Spenser is not just a pretty face. Anyone interested in politics,
>> religion,
>> psychology, love and gender, etc., can find plenty to occupy them. But
>> perhaps if these are your primary (certainly only) interests, you
>> might be
>> inclined to read elsewhere? It seems to me that what drew Keats,
>> and Eliot,
>> and no doubt Stevens, to Spenser, was the beauty of his language, or,
>> shifting from schemes to tropes, the beauty of his conceits. A
>> lesser poet
>> than Spenser who has suffered similarly is Thomas Campion. Believe
>> it or
>> not, there used to be quite an interest in Campion. He even got
>> his own
>> Oxford English Text edition, and there were loads of books and
>> essays. No
>> more. The OET edition is long out of print, and, though I believe
>> there was
>> once a plan for a new edition (by Catherine Ing?), I assume that's now
>> moribund. Could we make similar observations about Herrick?
>> Pastoral as a
>> genre? Song?
>>
>> Anyway, all this simply to say that the fluctuations of the
>> literary market
>> have always been with us and always will be. This may be a good thing,
>> really. While we can lament the current Spenserian Downturn, we
>> can also
>> hold onto our shares, ride out the recession, and work toward his
>> recovery.
>>
>> Hannibal
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Anne Prescott
>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> > Just what I hope is a final thought/comment (from me, I mean).
>> I'd like to
>> > report that this term I have taken on, in a addition to my two
>> courses, an
>> > individual independent study for a grad student (she gets the
>> points but it
>> > would not be like Columbia to, you know, like, do anything so
>> vulgar as pay
>> > this Barnard professor extra). A whole term on Spenser, she
>> begged. She's
>> > ecstatic as she reads him. All hope is not gone. The other thing
>> that cheers
>> > me, aside from Spenser's appearance on Star Trek, is the number
>> of brilliant
>> > young scholars in the field. The new Spenser Studies should be
>> appearing
>> > almost literally any minute, and wow, are they good. Anne.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Feb 6, 2009, at 8:04 AM, Germaine Warkentin wrote:
>> >
>> > Stephen Willett's thoughts on the difficulty of getting the FQ onto
>> >> courses, and teaching it once it's on the list, impressed me
>> greatly, and
>> >> not only because of what he said about Spenser, every word of
>> which I agree
>> >> with. As I suppose many people on this list know, I've been
>> retired now for
>> >> ten years, and so I'm not up to date on what's going on in the
>> classroom.
>> >> But even before I retired I could see that a change was taking
>> place,
>> >> creating a new kind of classroom in which I would never be able
>> to work. I
>> >> taught a lot of theory in my day (some of it classes where
>> Spenser was one
>> >> of the test cases) but I also taught Spenser to undergraduates,
>> in the early
>> >> days books I-III and Mutabilitie, plus the Epthalamion and some
>> sonnets.
>> >> That would sound like a pretty heavy load to today's young
>> scholars. This is
>> >> not a rant, nor am I a laudator temporis acti. In fact, I am
>> not even a real
>> >> Spenserian, though I've done a couple of good articles on him.
>> I am just
>> >> worried about what the students are missing when they don't
>> have that vast
>> >> luxurious poem to sink into, in the ways Stephen describes.
>> Even more, I am
>> >> worried about the teachers who are missing the same experience.
>> In my day I
>> >> heard a good deal of grousing from students who didn't want to
>> read Paradise
>> >> Lost, and I told them firmly that reading PL was like going to
>> the gym -- it
>> >> exercised every literary faculty they possessed, and taught the
>> rest. They
>> >> didn't mind being told "it's good for you" -- they very
>> intelligently wanted
>> >> to know why, so I showed them, year after year. It seems to me
>> Stephen makes
>> >> a very fine, indeed a powerful, case for the Spenserian riches
>> that are
>> >> there for both students and teachers -- to learn from and to be
>> enjoyed.
>> >> Germaine.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >>
>> ***********************************************************************
>> >> Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus)
>> >> VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto),
>> >> 73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
>> >> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> >>
>> >> "The primary rule of intellectual life: when puzzled, it never
>> hurts to
>> >> read the primary documents" (Stephen Jay Gould)
>> >>
>> ***********************************************************************
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Hannibal Hamlin
>> Associate Professor of English
>> The Ohio State University
>> Burkhardt Fellow,
>> The Folger Shakespeare Library
>> 201 East Capitol Street SE
>> Washington, DC 20003
>> [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>Hannibal Hamlin
>>Associate Professor of English
>>The Ohio State University
>>Burkhardt Fellow,
>>The Folger Shakespeare Library
>>201 East Capitol Street SE
>>Washington, DC 20003
>>[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
>>[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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